Precious stone and metal jewelry is at its most beautiful when perfectly clean and free from body oils, film, grime, and other deposits that can hide the shine, sparkle and character of the jewelry. Notwithstanding the desirability of maintaining jewelry in a very clean state, it is difficult to effectively clean jewelry.
The professional process of cleaning jewelry involves the following steps. First, the jewelry pieces are boiled in a concentrated cleaning solution for about 15 to 30 minutes. Next, the jewelry is removed from the concentrated cleaning solution and is rinsed with hot water. Lastly, the jewelry is subjected to high pressure steaming to quickly remove any remaining water to prevent spotting. While cleaning in this manner renders a piece of jewelry the benchmark 100% clean, the equipment, time, and steps involved in professionally cleaning jewelry is out of reach of the vast majority of consumers and even small jewelry stores with limited space. As a result, there have been attempts to devise less costly and involved devices and methods for cleaning jewelry. For example, liquid jewelry soaking solutions are available. A user will soak a jewelry piece for some time, and then attempt to brush away the grime. Results of about 30-50% are about the best achievable. Commercial ultrasonic jewelry cleaning machines are now being sold. However, these machines can only accomplish cleaning to about 70-80% clean.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,490 to Gross discloses a low temperature apparatus for cleaning jewelry. The Gross device delivers a low temperature mist of cleaning liquid and a stream of compressed warm air for drying the jewelry once it is cleaned.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,784 to Bellman discloses a method and apparatus for jewelry and small parts cleaning. In the Bellman method and apparatus, a large mesh basket with internal hooks posts and compartments is provided for placement in an automatic dishwasher, where the water and water laced detergent will be allowed to impinge on the jewelry pieces contained in the basket and thereby cause cleaning. According to Bellman, results of 80-85% cleaning can be achieved. While this range of results is comparable or better than that achieved with other available non-professional cleaning methods, it still falls short of the perfect results achieved by professional methods of cleaning, which leaves jewelry most brilliant.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a simple and easy to use method and kit for cleaning jewelry which achieves 95%+ cleaning results.